


The Anger and the Fear

by TerrusDacktellus



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M, Spuffy, season 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-21
Updated: 2016-02-21
Packaged: 2018-05-22 09:48:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6074677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TerrusDacktellus/pseuds/TerrusDacktellus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Rescuing Spike had been supposed to make her feel better. Knight (well, slayer) kills the dragon (übervamp), rescues the princess (prince. Kinda) and saves the day. That was how it was supposed to go and yet, the fear that had churned deep in her stomach for so long was still there, bubbling away."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Anger and the Fear

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nowinlivingcolor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nowinlivingcolor/gifts).



> Written for a mini fic meme on Tumblr, prompt #18, things you said when you were scared

Rescuing Spike had been supposed to make her feel better. Knight (well, slayer) kills the dragon (übervamp), rescues the princess (prince. Kinda) and saves the day. That was how it was supposed to go and yet, the fear that had churned deep in her stomach for so long was still there, bubbling away.

Buffy crept down the stairs to peer at her own personal damsel in distress, sleeping the sleep of the recently rescued. His face looked horrible, ringed with bruises and hollow with hunger. She couldn’t imagine the First had bothered to feed him. A chill ran up her back as she drew closer and her mind insisted on presenting her with live action renditions of how the marks could have gotten there. She was still angry with him, she supposed, in a distant sort of way, and, but it was anger diluted, watered down, by the fear.

This was the weapon of the First — the fear that made you gasp for breath when you woke up in the morning because you felt as though something heavy had been sitting on your chest all night; that kept you lying awake in bed, long after midnight because all the dark things that had never seemed to scare you before seemed to have been crammed into the shadows of your room; that made you jump every time something flickered in the corner of your eye, because was it there? Was it watching you?

It wielded its weapon well, a sneaky blow here, a deft slice there, cutting away at her friends, at her family, at the girls — almost children — who were depending on her for protection, snipping the bonds of trust, love, loyalty and respect, until they were severed from her entirely. That was her fear, she knew, and that was what it wanted. Her, Buffy Summers, alone, isolated. Vulnerable. She heaved out a long breath and sat by the bed. In the dim light, Spike’s profile was distorted, the smooth line of his nose broken by lumps and swellings. He muttered something from between split lips and she leaned closer to hear.

“She will come for me.”

Buffy rested her head against the cool bed frame and listened to him repeat it, over and over, like a chant. Like a prayer. She will come for me, she will come for me, she will come for me. How long had he been telling himself that? Had he really believed? Or had it just been an empty promise, something to cling to amid the pain and the torture?

Spike shifted in his sleep, then moaned softly as the movement jarred his broken ribs. His mantra broke down and he woke, inhaling sharply, then gasping again in pain.

“Buffy?” he said, peering at her through swollen shut eyes. He glanced around the room in confusion: he had been asleep when they’d brought him in from the car and didn’t know where he was. “Is this real?”

“It’s real,” she said. “You’re fine.”

Her voice sounded flat and hollow to her, and Spike, Spike with his broken hands and cracked skull and weird, rattling breathing, pushed himself up into a sitting position with a gasp of pain.

“Wha’s wrong?” he slurred, even as Buffy scrambled to push him back down against the pillows.

“Dammit, Spike, just lie down,” she hissed. He wavered, his head weaving in his delirium.

“You did come.” His voice was a broken wheeze. “Knew you would.”

Buffy slumped against him, forgetting for a second that she was afraid, that she was still angry with him, for last year, for the bathroom, for leaving, for coming back, for the soul, for actually trying to make things better so she couldn’t be angry with him. For a moment, for a breath, she just let her forehead rest on his cool shoulder, the closest part she could find that wasn’t bruised.

“Knew you’d come for me,” he whispered, touching her hair lightly with stiff, awkward fingers.

“And if I hadn’t?” she hissed, her eyes screwed tightly shut. She didn’t know what scared her more, his faith in her or how close she’d come to failing it. “If it’d beaten me?”

He was silent for so long that she lifted her head to look at him and was met with an old Spike look, sarcastically twisted lips, ironically lifted eyebrow, the clear blue of his one good eye astonishingly lucid.

“It could’ve,” she said, not knowing why she was clinging to this idea so insistently. “I could’ve lost —”

The fight. The war. My family. You. Buffy swallowed.

“Didn’t though, did you?” Did he sound — smug? “Kicked that prehistoric fucker’s arse, yeah?” Wow, okay, that was definitely smug.

“Are you … proud of me?”

He gave a one shouldered shrug, then winced in pain. “Course,” he said. “Proud to know you, slayer.”

The clarity in his eyes was fading, his face slackening again. “Proud to know you,” he mumbled again, as he drifted back to sleep.

Buffy turned back around and rested her head against the bed, feeling suddenly drained and oddly better for it. “Huh,” she said.


End file.
